This is where I live. I love my life.Class:
Depends on the class, doesn't it?
* Globalization and International Politics - kicks ass. We read articles titled things like "International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order", and I buy books with titles like In Defense of Globalization and Globalization and its Discontents (they're on opposite sides of the spectrum). At least I keep pace with the class, that's more than I expected of myself. Our professor is rather frightening. He was asking the class, "What do you obsess over in 1601 (Intro to International Politics in most schools)?" A brave kid raises his hand. "The Cold War?" he suggests meekly. "Yes!" shouts our professor, eyes widening rabidly, fists clenching. "War! War! War!" On another note, I'm sort of turning less liberal than I used to be. I know this will frighten many, but what can I say? It's pretty hard to argue against international trade and foreign direct investment, and Multinational Corporations are required for that. I will always remember, as should you, that MNCs need to be regulated, preferably by the international community and preferably in narrow, specific terms, to keep things like the dethroning of Salvador Allende and the whole Nestle baby formula thing from happening again. The class itself moves fast and who knows how tough the midterm and final is going to be. I have yet to participate, but I'm not really much of a "participant". Yeah, I'm gonna be such a great politician, aren't I? Sigh.
Francisco Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters came up on a "political science" Google image search.
* Statistics for Economics - boring as all hell, but sadly enough there are apparently people who don't know what the mean, median, and mode are. I know, I'm thinking the same thing, don't worry. In this class me and saffron write notes to each other about how much we hate life. Basically. I've also taken to doodling. As of two weeks in, I have not learned anything. Well, a few things that I probably could have inferred on my own - like the fact that if you're looking for consistency you want a very small standard deviation, and the sample with the slightly lower mean but smaller standard deviation is better than the sample with the slightly higher mean and huge standard deviation, meaning it fluctuates all over the place. And yeah, see, I just killed half your brain cells with that, didn't I? It's too bad there's a problem set due every week. This is the lab instructor teaching us how to use Excel: "Oh, this is bad, guys, this is really bad."
Ha ha ha, only a Seattle company would make this sign.* Environmental Science - not really boring, but the way the class is set up, and the professor, is a "face-vault". Everybody knows what that is? Google will not help you. A face-vault is an anime-to-real-life term, used to describe a reaction to something outrageously, unbelievably stupid, usually by falling over on one's face, hence face-vault. Me and saffron just look at each other and go "face-vault" during this class. The glorious professor (sarcasm radar going off charts here) went on this tangent on 9/11 about how "there are people that want to kill us" and he puts up an American flag to indicate the start of class. He also gives out five million handouts, which seems to contradict his supposed environmental principles. He also has yet to teach much of anything. He just shows off his vacation pictures and bemoans how stupid students today are. Thanks, Mr. Professor-Man.
Yay trees! Boo Environmental Science!* Elementary Chinese - on some days, this is a good, fun class. On other days, I want to shoot myself, not because it's so easy, but because it's so goddamn hard. Everyone told me Chinese would be hard/impossible. Did I listen? No-oo-ooo... so here I am, trying to pronounce four tones that make no sense to me and at the same time forcing my lips and tongue into formations they don't understand, and trying to understand the word. And that's just with the pinyin (romanized writing system). The characters themselves are basically artwork, okay? They are not letters, they are freaking pictographs. I had no idea a language could be as supernaturally foreign to me as this class is. Although I had a little breakdown on Thursday and now I've spent enough time staring at the sheets with a blank, frozen expression on my face that maybe I'm memorizing some words. Wo shi Meiguo ren. Wo bu hui shuo Zhongwen. (I'm American. I don't speak Chinese) On the plus side my Chinese name is Lin Mei Na, and "mei" means "beautiful" and "na" means "graceful". Aww, right? I didn't choose it myself, by the way. I'm not that vain. I'd have chosen something like "smart". Of course, this class makes me feel anything but...
Fuck it, why isn't Chinese like this?!In general, however, I hate homework, I don't much like sitting in class, and I just want to be done with school. This is college: "Welcome to the next new exciting phase of your life! Everything will be totally different! You'll be independent! You'll take classes you want to take, instead of classes that are just graduation requirements! You'll meet so many new people! You'll start making a difference! Oh, except for the fact that it's just high school with harder classes. And you don't live with your parents. But some of your classmates will. And you can't really take classes you want to take, you have lots of graduation requirements to fulfill because we're a liberal arts college. And everybody still acts like dumb teenagers. And you still mooch off your parents." Sorry to spread the awful truth, but you better take it with your vitamins now rather than waiting till you're here and you have to go crawling to the campus counseling center to deal with the crushing disappointment.
Lies. ALL LIES.
